Looking for a good scifi RPG

[Bard]

Just as title says, me and my group decided to try something new and for a change to the usual fantasy or modern setting we wanted to go Scifi, BUT noone of us really know much about scifi rpgs.
So here I am, asking for suggestions!

Here's some points to what we're looking for:
1. REAL scifi, with spaceships and all, robots are not a must but are welcome. An exploration aspect to the setting would be nice. Something like Firefly, Stargate, Macross, Gundam.
2. No strange scifi where the tech is lost and barely working as in Warhammer.
3. Rules should allow for some CO and synergy between powers/character
4. More or less we end up doing pretty action packed campaign, but a member of two like some investigative/social moments too, so good rules for those are a plus, not really needed, but a plus.

[sirpercival]

If you're OK with including magic, I have a futuristic magic D&D3.5 campaign setting called Magipunk.

[Bard]

I don't really mind a bit of ""magic"" of some kind, but I want the main focus to be science and tech, magic is ok, but only as a rare or racial-bound thing, even better if it's some sort of mental power or "alien science".  At the start we thought about Star Wars Saga too, but the fact that the Force was a bit too "central" to the whole setting and story turned us away.

[xaotiq1]

Slipstream for the Savage Worlds ruleset is pretty good. Lost Colony for the Deadlands Classic/D20 ruleset is interesting, though it might be a bit too magicky. Traveller. GURPS has a decent amount of sci-fi goodness. Or just look through this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Science_fiction_role-playing_games

[Unbeliever]

I don't know Savage Worlds, though I hear it is probably pretty good for what you're talking about. 

If you are looking for more action and space combat, Star Wars Saga Edition is a great ruleset (though a little rough around the edges) that is easily adaptable for your purposes.  The space between Firefly-style games and Star Wars scoundrels being essentially nil.  Force powers can be dumped or reflavored as psychic powers -- the Mass Effect hack for SWSE uses them for biotics, for instance.

For mecha-oriented games, the only system I've seen that really works well is Mutants and Masterminds.  But, that's annoying since it's a lot of start-up costs -- you have to pretty much generate all the mecha.  There's also a new Battletech game out, too, though I don't know anything about it. 

[Bard]

Traveller might be a nice fit, I'll need to look into it. Not sure about Slipstream, it seems a bit lacking in the "science" part of scifi in favor of cheap pseudoscience from the 60ies and it's a shame since we all know Savage World rules already. I might want to try looking in Lost Colony tho!
Let's see if I can grab some info on those two.

Btw, where can I find the Mass Effect conversion for Star Wars?

[littha]

There are d20 future and other scifi based things but I have never played them myself.

[Unbeliever]

...
Btw, where can I find the Mass Effect conversion for Star Wars?

http://www.shadowflareindustries.com/eberron/masseffect/Mass%20Effect%20Campaign%20Setting.pdf

But, I think it may have been updated since then by various people.  Check out the Star Wars section of the wizards.com community -- the Praxeum sub-forum, I think. 

[Halna LeGavilk]

Eclipse Phase. EclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephase

Seriously. One of the best sci-fi RPGs out there, with a lot of horror/transhumanist elements. As a bonus, it's all Creative Commons material!

http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/

[Nanshork]

Firefly and Stargate also exist as their own RPGs.  I can't make any judgement calls on how good they are though.

[Bozwevial]

Eclipse Phase. EclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephase

Seriously. One of the best sci-fi RPGs out there, with a lot of horror/transhumanist elements. As a bonus, it's all Creative Commons material!

http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/

I want to love it, but if I were ever to run a game, I'd need to make a few changes of my own. For one thing, chargen, skills, and aptitudes are just needlessly complex. For another, do we really need twelve whole combat skills?

On the other hand, it's a Creative Commons licensed transhumanist game that lets you play as a space octopus. While it fails on a lot of points for me, it had a lot of wiggle room in the first place.

Firefly and Stargate also exist as their own RPGs.  I can't make any judgement calls on how good they are though.

Can't speak for Stargate, but from what I remember of the Firefly RPG, it's not very good. The RNG is, as I recall, very swingy.

I'm actually tempted to get my hands on a copy of the rulebook and do a review or something.

[Quillwraith]

Eclipse Phase. EclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephaseEclipsephase

Seriously. One of the best sci-fi RPGs out there, with a lot of horror/transhumanist elements. As a bonus, it's all Creative Commons material!

http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/

It's creative commons?!  For quite a while I have avoided it because of unwillingness to buy rulebooks for another game. Now I shall get it immediately.

[Eagle of Fire]

Here's some points to what we're looking for:
1. REAL scifi, with spaceships and all, robots are not a must but are welcome. An exploration aspect to the setting would be nice. Something like Firefly, Stargate, Macross, Gundam.
2. No strange scifi where the tech is lost and barely working as in Warhammer.
3. Rules should allow for some CO and synergy between powers/character
4. More or less we end up doing pretty action packed campaign, but a member of two like some investigative/social moments too, so good rules for those are a plus, not really needed, but a plus.

I played Traveller once. A great sci-fi RPG which fit exactly all your points.

The shortfall of this system is that you need a lot more general knowledge to make it run right than normal RPGs. If you are lacking then you might find the whole thing really overpowering. I remember taking 2 or 3 hours building my first char. So many rolls and so many decisions which are very easy for someone who know the system by hand but which were overly complicated for me at the time.

I think we had a great DM though and the whole campaign (while I was part of it) was great. Too bad I needed to drop out because I didn't have enough time to dedicate to this and that later on I completely lost touch with them even when I wanted to get back to it.

[skydragonknight]

I also played Traveler as a one shot and it was pretty fun. It's the only rpg I know of where you can actually die during character creation due to random elements, which is actually quite hilarious (don't worry, it's pretty uncommon unless you make a lot of risky choices in your background).

I'd say just try different ones out. You never know - a game could be amazingly fun even while only meeting half of your criteria.

[Pencil]

I didn`t like Eclipsephase very much.I think the premise is total bs and doesn`t work very well and everything is poorly explained.
It is essential for Sci-fi to have a scientific foundation and this whole morph/ego thing does not make sense at all.

But all power to you if you like it.

[Quillwraith]

It is essential for Sci-fi to have a scientific foundation and this whole morph/ego thing does not make sense at all.

?

[Pencil]

What do you question?The assumption that scifi should have an scientific foundation or my questioning of this ego/morph thingy?

[Quillwraith]

my questioning of this ego/morph thingy?

I thought that that part of eclipse phase had about as much scientific basis as almost anything in scifi. 

[Pencil]

I don`t think they explained the "ego" thing pretty well.It is some kind of soul/consciousness that can be put into data and is separate from the original body.This seems for me pretty stupid since it contradicts pretty much all mind/body philosophers.

Either consciousness is the soul and separate from the body, it can`t be translated into data since it is not material, or the consciousness is the body and thus can`t be separated.
Hard to explain to someone not into this topic (not saying you are but I just don`t know  )

[Bozwevial]

I don`t think they explained the "ego" thing pretty well.It is some kind of soul/consciousness that can be put into data and is separate from the original body.This seems for me pretty stupid since it contradicts pretty much all mind/body philosophers.

Either consciousness is the soul and separate from the body, it can`t be translated into data since it is not material, or the consciousness is the body and thus can`t be separated.
Hard to explain to someone not into this topic (not saying you are but I just don`t know  )

It's perfectly reconcilable. Let's say you're running around in a morph that takes a short swim outside the airlock.  While the backups that are kept may be perfect down to the last instant of life and the ego that's sleeved into the new morph is completely identical to the one that was running around in the old morph, for all intents and purposes the old you is dead. Completely. There's no Cartesian dualism at work here; the new you is an exact copy of the old you (plus or minus a new morph), but it isn't the old you. It didn't even exist before the old you died. New you is the combination of a vat-grown morph plus data backups made from old you. And yet, from your perspective (and more importantly, a societal and legal perspective), one instant you were suffocating and the next you woke up in a sterile chamber somewhere, with no gaps in between. Everything old you could remember, new you can remember. Who's to say that the new you isn't the old you?

So depending on the tone you want, you can either play up the existential angle (am I still me if I keep dying and being reborn? What's the religious verdict here, if any?) or the transhumanist angle (the real me is the ego, not the morph). Either one works, which is perfectly acceptable.

What you really ought to be complaining about are the hacking rules. That entire section of the book is a crime against simplicity and also makes no goddamn sense when compared to one of the setting's core conceits--namely, that your mind is a program that can be rewritten.